UNIDEE: Open Call for 6 Grants Opportunities

Expanded body #2 _ Inhabiting Time. An experience about Time in the Oasi Zegna.

UNIDEE – University of Ideas is a multifaceted platform offering an educational programme of residential modules at Cittadellarte and art residencies. Based on interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and experience exchange, the programme fosters processes of cross-pollination to investigate the relationship between art and public sphere.

The module offers an immersive experience in the territory of the Oasi Zegna, a protected mountain area extending for about 100 sq. km. in Piedmont, in the Biellese Alps, between Trivero and the Cervo Valley. Starting from an aesthetic experimentation based on a non-hierarchical ontology, according to which all subjects (living and non-living, plants, animals, rocks, objects, etc.) coexisting in that area are put on the same level, the participants will be involved in a wide-spectrum debate on the concept of Time. Through a series of field experiences led by experts from various disciplines, the selected artists will have the opportunity to experience first-hand some of the perceptive aspects of Time in a natural environment, through a comparison between the different temporalities characterising the natural systems: from the Deep Time attested by rocks and their transformation to the temporality of living beings (from the life span of a few minutes of some insects to the life span of hundreds or even thousands of years of trees), eventually questioning the concept of Time itself as a fundamental variable operated by physics in the last century.

What is Time? How do we perceive the flow of Time and what is our relationship with it? What is Time for a plant? How can we approach the Deep Time of rocks? What is the relationship between the Time of machines, of human beings and natural cycles? What is free Time? What is Time for contemporary physics?

The module will represent an opportunity to discuss and reflect on these topics in an informal way, together with the mentors and the invited guests.

The first part of the module will be base-camped in the mountain refuge Alpe Moncerchio (Bielmonte, BI), situated within the Oasi Zegna, and will be characterized by a few walking excursions during which the participants – in direct contact with the natural environment of the Oasi Zegna - will experiment in person different perceptive aspects linked to Time. In the course of the excursions the mentors and the specialist guests will involve the participants in individual and collective activities, observations, gathering of materials and discussions.

The second part of the module will be held in Cittadellarte (Biella) and will consist in a work of individual research through which each participant will elaborate the experience of the previous days in the Oasi to eventually produce – under the guidance of the mentors – actions, works, devices, tales, as expressions of new ways of being in Time.